Telecommuting

Working from home, once code for slacking off on the couch, is now a legitimate way to get work done. In the last 20 years, telecommuting — anything from taking a couple of hours in the morning to send emails to setting up shop full-time in a home office — has gone from niche benefit to in-demand perk. Globally, around 20 percent of workers do some or all of their work at home — and that doesn’t include those camping out in remote, communal spaces. Technological improvements like better Wi-Fi and video chat have made getting work done outside a traditional office more feasible for many jobs. But the freedom to work from wherever, some argue, has come at the expense of corporate culture and productivity. Some bosses want to bring the work-from-home boom to an end.

In the U.S., 60 percent of companies offer remote-work arrangements, up from just 20 percent in 1996. Telecommuting is just as popular in India, Indonesia and Mexico. But after decades of expanding work-from-home policies, some employers are rethinking them. IBM, once a telecommuting pioneer, gave thousands of remote workers an ultimatum in mid-2017: Relocate to one of IBM’s offices or find a new job. Facing 20 consecutive quarters of falling revenue, IBM calculated that its workers would perform better in close proximity to colleagues. Yahoo! Inc. made a similar move while going through financial troubles in 2013 as did Best Buy Co. Inc. and Honeywell International Inc. Cutting back on remote work risks irking employees. The flexibility telecommuting provides is especially important to working moms and dads at a time when the share of two-parent households in which both work full time is at an all-time high in the U.S.